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Freelancer.com has ruined my life

trustpilot.com

41–50 of 359 posts

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#41
post #33

This review should get pulled. If the reviewer posted this under his real name, then he should remove it. This review will kill his reputation, which will cause more problems than anything mentioned in the review. If it's not a real name, then I imagine it's a violation. This is the only review under this user. The review has a TLDR at the top, but my own TLDR for this review would be "I was desperate". It's easy for…

What's wrong with you?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#42
post #12

I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry level experience, it's just generally expected. Thi…

Am I the only one seeing the irony in this being posted on Trustpilot, a website letting contractors and other businesses pay hundreds of dollars not to destroy their reputation?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article doesn't mention how much you paid them. If you are paying someone 5$ per hour, you can't expect much. edit: you mention the prices in the comments, so here they are for anyone curious: Node.js port 155 USD, Android port 789 USD, Website theme 300 USD. It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries. (sic!) >Node.js port 155 USD This is good for what, 1 hour of work? Pay pea…

> Pay peanuts, get monkeys. This, this and this. There's isn't a dearth of good talent out there. Please just be willing to pay a fair price (not just for the hours worked but for the fact that he's available to you on demand, cc Adam Smith). As an aside, I do believe freelancer.com should do a better job filtering candidates (and gigs). Can maybe turn into a premium service like toptal.

>Can maybe turn into a premium service like toptal.

Yeah, no. They literally just ask you a random question from CTCI and call it a day if you can make it run in 20 minutes.

All of these "gig economy" websites are funny that way. Go over to the "I want to hire people" tab and they'll tell you all about having the best experts in the field.

Then you look at how they find those experts and it turns out that they make them do a fizzbuzz.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#44
post #12

I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry level experience, it's just generally expected. Thi…

I agree with the race to the bottom part.

Never.. ever.. catch yourself in a race to the bottom.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your article doesn't mention how much you paid them. If you are paying someone 5$ per hour, you can't expect much. edit: you mention the prices in the comments, so here they are for anyone curious: Node.js port 155 USD, Android port 789 USD, Website theme 300 USD. It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries. (sic!) >Node.js port 155 USD This is good for what, 1 hour of work? Pay pea…

Well, the hour rate in europe is much higher than in Asia because the living costs are much lower. So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY

Let us not pretend that the price is driven by living costs. It is driven by desperate people who will work below cost to get a foot in the door.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#46
post #33

This review should get pulled. If the reviewer posted this under his real name, then he should remove it. This review will kill his reputation, which will cause more problems than anything mentioned in the review. If it's not a real name, then I imagine it's a violation. This is the only review under this user. The review has a TLDR at the top, but my own TLDR for this review would be "I was desperate". It's easy for…

Safety nets are good, but that review is about the abuse of power by a freelancer.com employee.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#47
post #12

I tried Freelancer.com when I was starting out, I was really happy when I got my first gig, I did a good job, the client was pleased, I got paid an equivalent of £1 an hour but accepted that as my foot in the door... I tried to keep going down this route but quickly realised that this kind of competitive race to the bottom in terms of price is not just the the entry level experience, it's just generally expected. Thi…

Same here at vWorker. Did great work, ranked in the 100s, but it was not sustainable. To top it off I got a job to implement a forex trading algorithm. He had a system to buy/sell on signals. But when it came down to it, it didn't trade profitably. He wouldn't believe the code worked, and I couldn't convince him his scheme was flawed because it worked when he did it manually - and I've watched his youtube videos of h…

Sounds like the time I decided to try one of these sites and ended up with a client who wanted software written to pick winning lottery numbers based on some system he'd devised to analyze past winning lottery numbers. Of course such a thing will never work in a fair lottery.

Guy refused to pay the $10 price after the "work" was done. Validated my suspicions that those types of site are a total waste of time even if he had paid the fee.

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didnt only hire Indians: 1 chinese, 1 indian, and 1 bangladeshi.

Don't the Chinese have a saying which means 'Pay low price, expect to get screwed over'? Bangladesh is even worse than India.

A more apt idiom is "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." [0]

[0] https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/if+you+pay+peanuts%2C+y...

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#49
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the number be based on living costs? For assembly line workers with no skill requirement, yes. For engineers? Definitely not. >So if you follow that principle, how is 155 USD low for 3 days work? its 1000 CNY Let's see: Bangalore is (only) 5 times cheaper than SF.[1] So it's hardly 3 days of work. Shanghai is 2.2 times cheaper.[2] 1 - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... 2 - http…

> Why should the number be based on living costs? Because that's basically the whole point of globalisation. Both parties benefit, I don't see what the problem is.

Are you living in India and working for that money, by a chance?

Re: Freelancer.com has ruined my life

#50

There’s a suspicious amount of “I’ll just leave those details out” in this article. That aside, this just goes to show why it’s important to work toward controlling your own destiny. That seems to be a theme here at HN, and for good reason. Your services will likely always be resold to someone, regardless of how high up the chain you are. However, the less layers above you there are, the lower your risk in ending up…

The severity of this persons claims are why arbitration was invented. If he's right, complaining on the internet isn't enough of a remedy. And if he's wrong, there ought to be some attempt to hear the other side
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